


A Little Sweetness

by PinstripesAndConverse



Category: City of Love: Paris (Visual Novel)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluffyfest, Post Season 2, Spoilers for Season 2, canon character death reference, cavity inducing fluff, dealing with grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 15:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14047275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinstripesAndConverse/pseuds/PinstripesAndConverse
Summary: Vincent walks in on the MC in the middle of attempting to bake.  He offers her a bit of help.Warning: Incredibly fluffy, likely cavity-inducing.  Established Vincent x MC.





	A Little Sweetness

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to a friend, who initially put this idea in my head.

Sophia stared at the smoking tray, the smell of burnt sugar and hot metal wafting through her apartment.  She shouldn’t have been so ambitious.  What the hell was she thinking, trying such a delicate dessert for a bake sale when she had  _never made them before_?!  

“Idiot,” she hissed at herself, turning on the stove-top fan and opening a window.

Great.  She already lost so much time doing this.  Kat would have….laughed, teased her relentlessly.  Told her to try again.  

She had all of the amenities she needed in this apartment, and the space, but it didn’t have the feeling, the homeiness of Kat, like the place on Canal St. Martin did.  Sophia sighed, grabbing the pan with oven mitts over her hands and made quick work of the charred remains, scraping the pan over the garbage bin.

She heard the door open and close over the spatula, mentally recognizing Vincent’s footsteps, but not feeling up to the company. Her good mood from earlier was darkened by the knowledge she was  _screwed_  for this bake sale and she would have to buy something and pass it off as her own.  

She glanced at the threshold between the hall and the kitchen, finding him standing in the doorway, as if hesitating to step through.  The expression on his face said it all as he put the scene and the smell together; she had tried to be neat in her process but failed miserably, pastry bags and bowls and utensils strewn about the large kitchen.

Vincent said nothing as he walked into the room, his suit jacket draped over his arm as he peered at the recipe card she had from Kat’s small collection.  

“They’re notoriously difficult to get right on the first try, Sophia.” He consoled, a gentle expression crossing his face as she placed the tray on the stove, brushing hair out of her face with the back of her hand 

“I don’t even know what to do now.  There’s no way I could ever pass off anything as my own.”

“You  _are_  a terrible liar.”  He rested a hip against the counter, eyes falling to the mess around the kitchen.  “And it wouldn’t do your skills justice.  You make some of the best desserts and I’m quite picky about what I eat.”

He was trying, but it wasn’t doing her mood any favors.  She appreciated the gesture and smiled weakly.

“Clean up everything and set the ingredients out again.” He said, turning on heel and walking out of the kitchen.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer and came back without his waistcoat and tie.  He grabbed the apron she kept hanging near the fridge, one he used more than she did, and put it on before folding his sleeves up neatly.  

“It’s not like you to give up so easily.” He teased softly, kissing her forehead.  “It should go quicker with a second set of hands.”

Sophia’s smile felt weak on her lips again as she collected dishes and set out ingredients again.  She watched out of the corner of her eye as she did dishes; Vincent to her left measuring, mixing, never once glancing at the recipe card.  She heard him once or twice mutter something under his breath she didn’t quite catch.  Sophia dried off the pastry bags and the metal tips, setting them aside for when the batter was finished.

Odd, he never told her he could bake.  He cooked on occasion, when Eugene wasn’t available or when neither of them were up to eating out, but he never mentioned baking.

“I used to make these with my grandmother when I was a child,” he separated the batter into smaller dishes so they could be colored.  “She did several batches wrong on purpose to show me how precise measurements and temperature needed to be.”

“The recipe looked easy enough.”

“It’s easy after the first few times. In this case, I believe your recipe simply has the temperature in Fahrenheit.”

Of course it did.  Leave it to Kat to have made these cards before she moved to Paris and never correct them.  She wondered why the number seemed so high.

She adjusted the oven to the temperature Vincent suggested and then moved to the island and prepped a cookie sheet, laying out the parchment paper.  Sophia traced a small cookie cutter she had to make the shapes consistent.  She was about to step back when Vincent moved to stand behind her, a pastry bag in his hand.  He offered it to her before covering her hands with his, guiding her on pressure and size.  They filled the trays in no time and put them in the oven after about a half an hour of letting them rest.  They made the filling and then set about cleaning up the dishes as the macarons baked.

“Second set of hands, huh?” She teased, rinsing a bowl before setting it on the drying pad next to the sink.

He stood behind her again, this time wrapping his arms around her waist for a moment.  “If you didn’t want my help, you could have said so.”

“You never gave me the chance.”

“This is true, I just can’t stand to see you distraught. If it’s within my power and ability to fix a situation, I’ll do so, especially if it means making you smile.”

“I know.”

He laid a kiss on her cheek before hesitantly letting her go and grabbing a towel to dry the dishes as she cleaned.  

“Something else is bothering you.” He said softly, glancing at her with a raised eyebrow.

Sophia sighed, narrowing her eyes as she thoroughly scrubbed another bowl.  She hated feeling like this, like everything was somehow connected to  _Kat_ , like nothing would ever be the same without her.

It would, she knew.  She’d find a new normal, with her friends, with the man standing beside her.  For someone who hated  _patience_ , he was surprisingly patient with her and their relationship.  

“Kat and I used to bake together, twice a month.” She rinsed the bowl, looking up at him once before focusing on washing all of the suds and batter from the ceramic.  “When she moved abroad, we settled for care packages and recipe sharing.  And then we started the tradition back up when I got here.  Now…it just feels empty.”  

She handed the bowl to him and reached for the measuring spoons next.  Sophia hated the silence that came with mentioning Kat.  Sometimes she felt as though it was a burden to bring it up, that months and months later, it still  _hurt_.  Her blue eyes were focusing on the plastic spoons when Vincent spoke.

“We could, perhaps, continue that tradition.  If you wanted to, of course.”

She looked up at him, slightly stunned, his eyes on the bowl as he turned the dish over and continued to dry it before he looked back at her.  It hadn’t occurred to her to ask since she felt as though it would be a constant reminder of that period of her life, of the circumstances that brought them together again in the first place.  A deeper part of her never expected him to want to do this with her, to deal with the parts of her that would always miss Kat.

The timer for the oven went off before either of them could speak, Vincent putting the bowl down to take the trays out of the oven.

He placed the trays on top of the oven and continued without looking at her, inspecting the macaron halves.  “She means a great deal to you, Sophia.  To shun that, and what you still feel, would be to shun a part of you.”  He turned back to her, meeting her gaze.  “Many things in my life  _are_  conditional, but the love I have for you is not.  I accept every part of you.”

She was wringing a towel between her hands as he spoke, pretending to dry her hands, but they were already dry at that point.  She knew Vincent cared about her but it still felt earth-shattering to her that someone could care so much about her, regardless of her baggage and flaws.  Sophia looked down at the towel before speaking again.

“Even the part that burns macarons?”

“Yes, Sophia. Even that part.”

She closed the small distance between them, wrapping her arms around him.  She cared not whether she would be covered in flour or whatever was on the apron (if there was anything, he was always so meticulous).  She felt warm arms around her and breath tickling her hair as he pressed stray kisses to her forehead and the top of her head.  

They let the caps cool until they were room temperature and then set about matching the ones that fit best together.  The macarons were filled and assembled and then placed in a container into the fridge.  Vincent scowled at the recipe card she had when he saw there was nothing about letting them set overnight, insisting that the icing setting was what helped with the texture.

Vincent removed the apron to throw it into the laundry.  “Next time, we’ll do dinner and dessert.”

“Has to be in your kitchen though.”

“It’s a date,  _ma chérie_.”


End file.
